


It'll Be Okay

by whilowhisp



Category: Leverage
Genre: Developing Relationship, F/M, First Kiss, M/M, Mid-Big Bang Job, Multi, Panic Attacks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-23
Updated: 2021-01-23
Packaged: 2021-03-15 19:07:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28943427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whilowhisp/pseuds/whilowhisp
Summary: After Eliot has to nearly let Hardison drown to get an invite to Damien Moreau's auction, he's having a hard time dealing with the guilt and panic it brought on. Parker, in her own way, helps.
Relationships: Alec Hardison/Eliot Spencer, Alec Hardison/Parker, Alec Hardison/Parker/Eliot Spencer, Parker/Eliot Spencer (Leverage)
Comments: 10
Kudos: 83





	It'll Be Okay

After the meeting with Damien Moreau, after having to stand idly, speak calmly, while Hardison sucked the air from the pneumatics of a chair just to survive, Eliot had his first panic attack in years. After Hardison told everyone… after he told everyone about the work he used to do, he sat on the floor of his small apartment’s bedroom with his fingers laced behind his head; elbows pulled as close to his face as he could get them. 

It’d been so long since he’d felt that way, the hammering of his heart against his ribs, the ringing in his ears, his stomach twisting up in knots. He’d long since learned to regulate his breathing, but that could only help so much when his mind wouldn’t _shut up_. 

Hardison could have died. If Hardison hadn’t thought quick, hadn’t have been the genius he was, he would have died. And Eliot would have been to blame. It would have been entirely Eliot’s fault, and his brain just wouldn’t stop running it all over and over in his head.

“It worked out. It worked out, stop.” He spoke under his breath through gritted teeth; eyes squeezed shut. “There’s no reason to freak out.” All he had to do was kill Atherton. Then they’d get the invite to the auction. They’d get Moreau. They were all getting out of this. 

No matter how much he tried to convince himself, he just couldn’t make it _stop_. He just kept seeing Moreau getting up and pushing the chair into the pool. He just kept hearing the splash, the struggle, the bubbles…

“Stop it, Hardison is _fine_.” He snarled.

“But you’re not.” He nearly jumped out of his skin, grabbing for the knife under the edge of the mattress before his frantic thoughts caught up to the voice. Parker didn’t even flinch. She just stared from her spot perched on the window he was very fucking sure he’d locked. 

His heart was beating so fast already, the shock of Parker’s sudden appearance had him feeling like it was going to burst right out of his chest. “Damnit, Parker!” His hand shook as he let go of the knife, and his fingers were like ice. He shook his hands out to try and get some feeling back in them. 

Parker just stared at him, face impassive. “ _What did you do?”_ All of a sudden, he couldn’t breathe. He forced air through his nose, forced himself to fill his lungs as full as he could get them, but it just made his head hurt worse. His vision started to wobble, turn black around the edges, so he shut his eyes. Deep breaths. He needed to calm down. Calm down. Calm…

“Eliot...Take a deep breath in…” 

“I’m _trying_.” Even his voice was trembling; it felt like his entire world was going to shake itself apart. Eliot pressed the meat of his palms into his eye sockets, pushing till he could see shapes in the darkness behind his eyelids. His ears were ringing, and he couldn’t even hear himself think.

Calloused hands molded themselves to the backs of his, so much smaller and so much stronger. “It’s okay.” Parker curled her thumbs under his palms, carefully pulling his hands away from his face so she could lace their fingers together. When he opened his eyes, it was more out of confusion than any real want to look at her, and he almost couldn’t bear to look at her. 

She was looking at him, though: all soft edges, unjudging, unexpectant. She just looked at him, held his hands in hers, and said, so earnestly he almost believed it: “It’s okay.” He squeezed her hands. She squeezed them back.

‘ _What did you do_?’ It just kept ringing in his head. God, if she only knew. His throat closed up, and he couldn’t meet her eyes. He pulled at his hands because his hands didn’t deserve to touch hers. Her hands were good, skilled, and his... 

Parker didn’t let go of him, just squeezed his hands in her vice grip and kept watching him with impassive eyes. “Whatever you did, whatever happened, that isn’t you anymore…” She spoke so softly the ringing in his ears almost overpowered her. “You’re not… whatever you were back then; you’re Eliot.” She made it sound so simple.

“You don’t just… stop having a past, Parker, that’s not how it works.”

“Yeah, but you don’t have to keep living in it. You did that already.” She insisted, squeezing his hands so tight the bones ground together. The pain was somehow comforting, grounding. She brought their hands up and pressed her lips, unpursed, to his, watching him all the while. Her breath and lips were warm, he hadn’t realized how cold his hands were, but the contrast made the gentle warmth of her lips, her breath, felt like brands on his skin. 

Eliot was weak. He could take down a room full of gun-wielding mobsters without even spilling his coffee, but in the face of Parker’s earnest care… the softness in her beautiful eyes, he didn’t stand a chance. And she knew it.

Parker knew when his defenses crumbled, smiling in that triumphant way she had and kissing his hands like they weren’t stained with blood, like they were worth cherishing. Then she let go of them, and he thought, for a moment, she was going to get up and leave or ask (tell) him to make food for her, but she didn’t. Instead, she cupped his face in both hands, and those soft, lovely, smiling lips were pressed to his. 

She smelled like peach shampoo and winch grease. Hardison had freaked out for almost a half-hour trying to identify the smell when Nate called them all to their new office when she had plopped herself down beside him and then was up and about the very next second. Eliot knew it was peach shampoo immediately, but it didn’t occur to him that it was Parker’s till Hardison started sniffing everyone and got promptly slapped by Sophie.

 _“What exactly are you doing, Hardison?”_ Nate had asked, that clipped edge he had when it came to Sophie, and Hardison had stuttered and stumbled over his words when he realized just how suspect his actions had. He’d already sniffed Eliot and gotten a punch for his trouble.

Eliot saved him from his continued fumbling. _“He smells peach shampoo, and he can’t figure out who it’s coming from.”_

 _“Peaches! That’s what I’m smelling!”_ Hardison looked relieved to finally have the answer but looked doubly befuddled when Parker piped up to answer his other question.

_“Oh! That’s me. I got peach shampoo.”_

It’d taken Hardison the whole job to get over it and at least a week to get over just how good she smelled. Eliot had eventually told him to shut up.

Hardison. Hardison, who loved Parker. Parker, who Eliot was in the middle of _kissing_.

He launched himself backward like her lips had burned him, feeling all at once like the worst person who could ever exist. He was kissing the girl his best friend loved, the same best friend who he’d nearly let die. He felt the panic creep along his veins like poison, felt the cold pit in his stomach roil and burn. 

This was horrible. **He** was horrible. Hardison and Parker deserved better.

“What, What?” Parker looked around like maybe a burglar had broken in, or like something had surprised Eliot into spooking. When she saw nothing, she gave him the most confused, innocent look. “What’s wrong?”

“What’s wrong-? Parker, you can’t just-,” Now he was stumbling over his words. His lips still remembered the way hers felt, how soft her cheek was when he’d brought his hand up to cup her face, so gentle with her even if she could probably break his arm without really trying. She just felt so fragile.

Parker still looked just as confused. “Why not? You and Hardison have.” His face flushed immediately. He’d wring Hardison’s neck if he didn’t feel so guilty for kissing the girl he loved and nearly letting him die. Hardison was the one who didn’t want to tell anyone else about those drunken fumblings in his penthouse suite apartment, rented under a wealthy recluse’s name. Hardison had made him promise not to tell anyone, had been very nervous about the idea of Parker finding out. Apparently, Hardison had also been the one to tell Parker anyway.

It hadn’t been much. They were drunk but not smashed; Eliot made sure he kept Hardison from getting too drunk since the man had mood swings when it happened. They’d been watching Hockey, Bruins against the Flyers, and it’d been one of those grudge matches, the kind that had you yelling at the referee even if it was a fair call. The Bruins had grown on Eliot. He was a Stars fan originally, growing up in Oklahoma, they were the only team within five-hundred miles, but he just enjoyed the game. He’d caught a few KHL games on tv when he’d been in Moscow, watched a scant few Serbian Hockey League games when he’d been in Belgrade. He just liked the sport.

What he didn’t expect to enjoy so much was explaining the sport to someone completely sports-stupid like Hardison. They spent hours watching games on NHL live, sitting on a too comfortable couch, and no matter how many times he’d had to explain off-sides to Hardison, he still enjoyed it.

The night of the Flyers match, Hardison had been just on the cusp of moody, and Eliot had just cut him off when Hardison had moved into his space. And Eliot had allowed it. Maybe it was because he was drunk, maybe it was because Hardison’s horrible cologne he was still trying to get him to toss had worn off into the soft sweat of their earlier fighting lesson, the sticky sweet of the orange soda he couldn’t get Hardison to toss, and it was easy to let it happen.

“ _Hey, uh… Eliot, man…_ ” Hardison had started, voice thick and eyes flicking this way and that, up to Eliot’s eyes, down to his mouth, to his hair, and off towards the tv where the bench was threatening to clear itself. It made the back of Eliot’s neck tingle, that awareness of someone checking him out. He felt like he shouldn’t be excited that it was Hardison checking him out.

When Hardison didn’t continue, Eliot prompted him, “ _Yeah?_ ” He dragged out the vowels, accent just a bit thicker with the alcohol in his system.

Hardison had frowned, licked his lower lip, then looked away. “ _You ever uh… hell, I’m just gonna ask…_ ” He muttered, squaring his shoulders and steeling himself for whatever he was about to ask. Even still, he hesitated. 

The way he looked at Eliot’s lips, it was obvious what he was going to ask, so Eliot didn’t make him say it. He placed the pads of his fingers to the stubble on Hardison’s jaw, carefully tipping his head up so he could look him in the eye. Eliot made sure to telegraph his movements, looking down at his lips, then back to his eyes. He closed the distance between them slowly, and he found himself putting on all those charms he tried on the girls in bars. He strategically paused just a hair’s breadth from Hardison’s lips, giving him an option. 

Hardison fell into the kiss like it was all that he could think of, like it’d been all he could think of for a long time. Maybe that was just wishful thinking on Eliot’s part, but the kiss made it easy to hope for things he didn’t deserve.

“So why can’t I do it?” Parker’s frustrated huff pulled him the memory of soft lips and stubble under his hands, and he blushed even darker.

“Parker, it’s… You and Hardison are-. That was-” It infuriated him that he couldn’t put to words why it was different, why that was before the ‘pretzels’ talk, why the ‘pretzels’ talk changed things. It infuriated him even more, when she rolled her eyes at his confusion. “Parker, it’s complicated. You and Hardison-”

“-talked about it. He kissed you, and he liked it. I kissed you just now, and I liked it. We both want to kiss you, and we both want you to like it. I don’t see what’s so complicated about this, Eliot. Unless…” She frowned, sitting back on her haunches. “Did you not like it?”

He didn’t have an answer for that. Except, he did have an answer for it; he just didn’t know if he was allowed to answer truthfully. He didn’t deserve either of them. He didn’t deserve the way Hardison had looked at him on the too comfortable couch, the way he looked when Eliot, in Hardison’s words, “kicked serious ass.” He didn’t deserve how Parker trusted him not to hurt her, physically or mentally, or emotionally. He didn’t deserve her easy smile, the way she laughed when he finally made a joke that she understood. He didn’t deserve the absolute pride she’d exuded from every pore when he’d picked a shitty Masterlock she said a four-year-old with DTs could pick.

He deserved it even less when he made her look at him like that, looking so crushed, so worried. 

“Eliot?” She was waiting for an answer. “It’s okay if you didn’t. It’s okay, Eliot, I didn’t mean to… I did this wrong, didn’t I?” She was beginning to problem-solve, replaying everything in her head to find the mistake, see the misstep. She was breaking it down like she did a botched job, and every second made him feel worse and worse.

“Parker.” When he reached for her, she backed away. “Parker.” He tried again, sitting up, but she was standing, backing up heel to toe. 

“I did everything Sophie said I should… Eliot, I didn’t mean to mess up.” Her words were combative, but her expression was distraught. In the back of Eliot’s mind, he despaired that Sophie had been brought in on this whole debacle. “I should have just stuck to comforting. I did that right, didn’t I? Eliot, I didn’t make that worse, too, did I?” 

He had to stop her. “Parker!” He pushed himself up on half numb legs and held his hands out to her, palms up. “Parker, calm down. It’s okay.” She paused in her thoughts, staring at his hands, then his eyes, then his hands again. Eye contact was still a weird thing for her. Sometimes she was okay, made too much eye contact, and sometimes the very notion of it made her wrinkle her nose, claim eyes were ‘evil.’ 

He took a careful step towards her, body relaxed and expression open. “Parker, you didn’t mess up.” She looked dubious, eyes narrowing like he might be lying to her, but he persisted. “You didn’t make anything worse. We just need to talk about this.” He offered her his hands, and she stared at them. After a moment of contemplative silence, where he didn’t press her to do anything, he made sure not even to make her feel like he would. They’d worked this out a long time ago, back when he started teaching her jujitsu when she’d figured out he wasn’t going to hurt her, even when they sparred.

Eventually, she reached out and hovered her hands over his, palms down. He raised his hands to meet hers. “It’s okay, Parker. You didn’t mess anything up. You didn’t. I’m just… confused.”

“Okay… What’s confusing?” She wrapped her fingers around his hand, and he matched it with his own.

Where to start? The whole thing was confusing, starting with: “I didn’t even know you and Hardison were…” She stared, waiting for him to finish the sentence. He sighed. Sometimes he forgot he had to spell things out for her. “I thought you hadn’t quite gotten past the… pretzels.” She nodded, thoughtful.

“Well, yeah. I mean… I have feelings for him. Really strong… weird feelings. I want to kiss him… and I wanna teach him how to lay in a hammock, and I thought about sleeping in his really big bed and listening to him snore and waking up to that big goofy smile he gets when he just wakes up, and I kinda want that, ya know?” She nodded thoughtfully, and he got it, he really did.

He’d seen that goofy look on his face. He knew how it felt to kiss him, and he knew what it felt like to want to kiss him. “Okay… But you’ve talked about kissing… me.” He couldn’t help blushing a bit at the idea. “Even though you two aren’t… And I think you’re forgetting that I nearly… I nearly got him killed today.” His throat closed up just thinking about it.

She sighed and looked at the ceiling, looking for the right words. “First of all, we talked about that… you were doing something really hard and… it’s okay. He’s not mad at you anymore, and… we were worried. That’s why I’m here. He told me to come here. I wanted to come here anyway, but he said he wanted me to come too, even though I was already gonna.”

“And second of all, what does it matter if me and Hardison are or… aren’t something?” She asked like it really didn’t. “We’re… Okay, so we kiss sometimes, and sometimes we just talk about kissing, but I still don’t know what to call it, and he says that’s okay. Sometimes we talk about kissing you, and he got really embarrassed when he admitted to kissing you, which I didn’t really get, but he thought it was really important to tell me.” She sighed hugely, 

Eliot rubbed at his face. He was tired. He had to maybe murder a man tomorrow. He’d had one and a half panic attacks, Parker was in his bedroom talking about kissing, and he’d nearly gotten Hardison killed not even twelve hours before. 

“Can we talk about this… later, Parker?” He finally asked, exhausted. She looked at him, and it was like she knew. She looked like she wanted to ask, but she also looked like she knew.

“Okay. You know it’s gonna be okay, right? Nates gonna think of something. Moreau is gonna go down, and you never have to do anything for him or with him or having to do with him ever again.” She nodded, certain, and brought his hands up to her face again. She kissed the backs, just like she had before, and inexplicably, it made him feel better. 

“Right… Alright, Parker.” He sighed and squeezed her hand. He really didn’t think about it; when she dropped their hands, he brought hers up to his and kissed the backs as she had with his. Eliot kissed her hands, gentle as he always was with her. She smiled, and it was blinding.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Eliot.” She reached up, pat his head, then she was at the window, slipping through it and out like she hadn’t been there at all. He closed the window behind her and sat heavily on his bed. He really hoped she was right, but it was hard to focus on just how much fear and anxiety he was feeling with the thirty minutes he’d just had. 

‘ _He kissed you, and he liked it. I kissed you just now, and I liked it. We both want to kiss you, and we both want you to like it._ ’

Hell, between having to possibly murder a man tomorrow and thinking about that, his emotions really didn’t know what was going on. He just had to tell himself it was going to be okay.

He just had to hope it’d be okay. It had to be okay.


End file.
